Penny Farthing !!

Penny Farthing is actually the fore father of the modern day bicycle with a bigger front wheel and a smaller rear wheel. Penny farthings date from the early days of bicycling and reached their peak of popularity in the 1880s. They were called penny-farthing because they reminded people of two British coins, the penny and the farthing. The initial days penny farthing had a much larger front wheel which required the rider to board on the seat via the rear step, but subsequently it got modified with relatively smaller wheels. Someday, I stumbled over a photo of this rare bike on internet, which was displayed on a shop in Kerela and instantly it was added to my next bucket list. Finally I caught a glimpse of the Penny Farthing at 22bikes.in, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, my home town. Apparently, Mr. Ajay Nanda (the owner) had kept it as his personal collection but I managed to convince him and get it delivered to Bangalore in September 2017.

Pennies require special skills to ride and my motivation to master the riding of unique bikes pushed me to own this and I tamed it as per the required riding conditions, learning from the mistakes and improvising in subsequent rides. When starting the ride, you need to keep your pedals at 3 o'clock position and then start the pedalling which provides a balance to the bike. You cannot really stand up on the pedals, so all activity is done seated, and of course the pedals are fixed, so no stopping even on downhills. Steering is unusual, because the bars move as you pedal, and when cornering sharply the wheel grazes your inner thigh, so care needs to be taken that nothing gets in the way. There are no effective brakes; the brakes on the rear wheel are largely ineffective and brakes on the front wheel can send you over the bars. There are no gears and the riding position is such that all your weight is above the front axle, hence it puts a constraint that rider with more than 60 kg can't ride it. It is very stable at low speed, and oddly enough, a bit scary at high speed. Caution is required while pedalling downhills as the handle bar vibrates at high speed. Due to the unusual design of the bike, sudden change in direction is not possible and overcoming the potholes and bad road conditions needs to be dealt with extreme care. While stopping both the brakes and pedal movement should be restricted at the same time. Riding it for a longer time or greater distance (couple of kms), affects the butts area as the rider's weight falls directly over the front axle and the rider experiences even the slightest vibrations of the road conditions.

Overwhelmingly, my riding experiences have been positive and I have managed to ride it for 50 kms at a stretch in the busy traffic of Bangalore. Its not advisable to join a group ride on a penny as the average speed is somewhere around 11 kmph. I enjoy riding this due to its unique challenges and the bike seems to make everyone else around magically happy. People wave, shout out, smile, ask endless questions and are generally fascinated. It's not uncommon to be passed by a car with someone leaning out of the window taking photos on their phone. School buses slows down on seeing the uncommon kinda cycle, with conductors and drivers trying to have a close look and a wave of smile on the face of kids enthralled by the glance of the rare bike. Stopping at a traffic signal means people glare both me and my bike as if a zombie appeared from Mars.

The term "header" was coined by Penny riders, because so many landed on their head, to the grave detriment of health. Having said that while it looks intimidating, I would suggest Pennys are "different" rather than "harder" to ride, so if you are a keen cyclist and do get the opportunity to try one, don't hesitate to climb aboard.